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Algerian-born French right-winger denounces hate campaign

An Algerian-born spokeswoman for France's mainstream-right Republicans has said she has been the victim of death threats and vicious messages by radical Islamists in an article published after a man was found guilty of hate speech in tweets to her this week. Lydia Guirous also attacked the left for failing to come to her defence.

"I'm a young woman of north African origin and right-wing," Guirous, who was born in Algeria's Kabylia region in 1984, wrote in Sunday's Journal du Dimanche. "For some people that's too much."

She has been targeted because of her political allegiance and her "tireless battle against radical Islam and the veil, a symbol of the subjection of women", she claimed.

She has received death threats, insulting references to her Kabyle origins and accusations that she has "sold herself to the Zionists", on social media, she says, as well as being abused and spat at on public transport.

Suspended prison sentence

A 21-year-old man was given a six-month suspended sentence on Wednesday for sending Guirous hate messages on Twitter.

Guirous accuses left-wing anti-racists and feminists of failing to speak up in her support.

"This silence betrays a refusal to accept that a woman coming from elsewhere who is a Muslim can be a fiercely republican patriot," she writes in the paper. "To deserve their support should I have played the blame game or insulted France?"